Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-01-31
MIR. BEEChER'S LETTER.
Modern FasIIlons-Wdmaa's Stronger
sense Of the Standardization
in Taste Needed.
'If Women's Fashions are Borrowed from
tho Glow of Sunr7se, Mems are Cat
from the Loom of Midnight"
By Henry Ward Beecher


asked, and several times, to write on the
subject of tall bonnets and upon the
slaughter of birds for the sake of orna
mentatlon. l take this public manner tc
refuse to do any such thing, 1t is true
that both are bad and one OF them out
rageous. But what of that? The pulpit
attacking fashion is the modern imitation
Of d IN QuiXote attacking q Windmill-Or,
IS it would be In this case, the windmill
attacking Don Quixote. Preaching
against fashion has been the stern amuse-
ment of the pulpit for
hundreds of years. What has ever
been gained? 1t is true that
Friends, called Quakers, adopted abso-
Lutte simplicity as badge of certain reli-
gious beliefs, and that primitive Meth
| odism had for one lifts requirements the
rejection OF oil ornaments. This Is very
| different from preaching or writing
against eXtrsvagances. The protests
were reactions. They were part of an
organized reformation of the whole life
and not of a mere change of fashion. 1t
was part of an intense and general reli-
gious movement made up of deeper in
pulses than those of mere taste in ap-
parel, and plainness itself becomes, in q
sort, the symbol of beauty.
Fashion is tickle, fastastic, changeable
and often destructive of taste or beauty
But these are the imperfectiOns of fashion.
1t is in itself rooted in some of the
strongest elements of human nature. The
sense OF the beautiful is stronger N
woman than in man. The desire of be-
ing attractive, the quick sense of what
will be attractive are especially intiuen-
tial. 1t is true that the worlds great
artists have been men and not women. 1t
is not any the less true that women are,
more than men, influenced by the sense
of the besuJitul. In woman it follows
her genius for domesticity. 1t creates
order and good taste in homes, It refnes
conduct, it blossoms in apparel, regulates
etiquette and everywhere in the realms
of home seeks to secure elements of the
| beautiful.
In man, on the contrary, the insplra-
| tions of beauty ill wider sphere, repre-
/ sent intellectual elements or aim at moral
grandeur at one extreme, or robust and
masterful passion on the other hand.
Men represent strength, W men attract
iveness; the one builds, the other dec
crates; men seek to produce the beauti-
full, women to be themselves beautiful.
The masculine ard the feminine are as
marked in the realms of the beautiful as
in bodily organization.
| The wonderful exception to this rule of
nature is found among birds. The female
is unadOrned, without glow of color,
without song, plain and unettractlve. 1t
| is the male ird that weaves the rainbow,
and fills the fields with music.
1t Will be all in vain for the pulpit to
inveigh against fashion with any hope of
| suppressing it. 1t may be corrected, ed
| uCated but never suppressed. Neither
ridicule nor reasoning will prevent the
| flow of that stream, whose toun-
tsins are deep and organic. News
paper essays, sermons, lampoons,
epigrams, fail upon fashion as dew
upon a sleeping lion. Fashion springs
from a necessity of being attractive, in
part also, but far less, from relish of
the beautiful and from the initiative fac
ulty and the love of change and novelty.
These forces constitute, if not the deep
est and strongest, yet the most eYcitable
and active of the forces of the mind.
Fa-hion is an ell presence of taste, of
sympathy, of the love of pleasing and the
hunger for admiration. 1t is not 8 mere
surface popularity. One may destroy
this particular fashion, but not fashion
it-elf.
The great need, then, is not mo, al dis
course, but education in taste. Little by
little the aesthetic education is becoming
part OF our schools and seminaries. The
general influence of art cannot fail to
limit the oscillations of fashion in CO.'S
tune, to repress violent contrasts whether
in form or color, and to reduce the sphere
in which eXtravagances are apt to pre-
vail.
Fashion comes from no one knows
where. Who invents and who propagates?
This is an IN solved mystery. Where is the
nest out of which come the flock of forms,
colors, combinations? 1t is certain that
in colors fashion is farnearer to correct
standard than in lines and combination of
forms. Fine lines and simple forms are
rare, but the disCords of color are rarer
yet. And yet antiquity gives US enduring
examples of beauty and symmetry of form;
but almost nothing of color! II it were
not for the charm of color fashion
would become hideous. The
human form is hardly consid-
cred as worthy of consideration. Now
lHSuIOu puu5 OUT Deulnu, L0eQ SWl0SS
around to the front with swathing ban
dsges suggestive of anything but beauty.
1t rel OiCes in Jumps; it swells out the
long train-useless and, in the circum-
stances in which it must needs be
used, absurd to ridiculousness-on the
plea of the beauty of flowing lines, and
then 1t breaks up at the next hour all
simple lines by rutlles, founces and drop
steal bandages. We may not hope, we
may not desire even that fashion shall
become precise and repetitiuus. We
may even wish that it may enlarge
the sphere of mems dresses, both
in colors and forms. A well dressed
man is to-day Glaster of white on
background of black. There is no copi-
BUSINESS, no range of color, no grace OF
fullness and elasticity. Color is BAN
ished. grace and mutable forms are I'M
known. A well dressed man is scarcely
more than sleek crow with q white
bib on his breast. CIergymen, gen
tlemen and writers come forth with the
insignificant cockade of cravat on their
necks-no scarfs, no flowery gowns, no
richness Of color. If woman's fashions
are borrowed from the glow of sunrise,
mems are cut from the loom of midnight
and topped off with the clumsy, graceless
and useless hat